Cops and Couples Therapy

I contacted a baby faced eighteen year old kid the other day. I was getting my dip and a highly caffeinated beverage and noticed that he appeared to be casing. The first thing out of the kids’ smiling mouth was “I’m on parole...I just got out of jail.” I said, “why are you smiling...are you proud of that?” When asked where he lived he said, “the rollin’ seventies,” a gang-type designation. Then it clicked, this kid is proud of going to prison. He got his stripes.

While this may not be a fair comparison, it seems to me that too many jaded, battle worn veteran cops talk about their three divorces with similar gusto. It’s like, “yeah, I divorced that crazy bitch.” And thus begins the next generation of divorced cops, as the baby faced rookies enter police culture. I shudder to think of the messages they get about marriage when driving around with the veterans during their field training.

Fine. But what if you don’t WANT a divorce? By stealing away to an isolated corner of the police department and pulling up ‘police mental health’ I’m assuming you’d like something more for your life. So, let’s talk about it. Here is a non-exhaustive list of signs that you should consider couples counseling:

1. You feel miserable (or something close to miserable) in your marriage.
2. You haven’t had sex since Y2K.
3. You resent your partner but can’t talk to him/her about it for whatever reason.
4. Your having or have had an affair.
5. You’d rather be at work than home.
6. Your ability to solve life problems (finances, child-rearing etc) with your partner has broken down.

Couples counselors don’t have magic wands. In fact, good therapists will tell you they’re not personally invested in you staying together or getting a divorce. That’s up to you. What they can do is help you clear the air, and communicate more effectively. As a therapist, peer support person, friend and husband I have found that the biggest problem in marriages isn’t finances, or child-rearing or work issues. It’s communication.

I’ve already covered the most common problems encountered in police marriages,

and the importance of getting professional help when its needed, so we’ll get right into how to make the most of your couples counseling.

Take the kid gloves off. You can’t solve problems you don’t talk about....so bring it [whatever ‘it’ is] up in the meetings. That doesn’t mean being abusive or sadistic. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve talked to people about their couples therapy that say, ‘I can’t bring THAT up?’ Really? You’re paying this shrink money! Probably a lot of money. You’re waisting your money if you don’t bring up the real issues that are bothering you.

If you’ve been going to couples counseling for awhile and dread going to your next session because of how uncomfortable it is, then your on the right track. It should hurt a little to be in therapy. If it’s a big Happy Fest you’re probably not doing the work you need to do to fix stuff.

Ultimately couples counseling should give you and your spouse clarity. Either you’ll realize you really do need to split, or you’ll realize this marriage thing is doable.

Or, you could skip the touchy feely crap, divorce ‘the bitch’ and move on. But if you fail to delve any deeper than ‘she was a bitch’ you’ll probably have the same problem with your next mate. “An unexamined life is not worth living.” Regarding police marriage, an unexamined life is probably going to cost you a lot of money and heart ache as well.

Cops and Divorce: Myth and Reality

For those of you with Attention Deficit Disorder here’s a summary of our topic this week: the popularly held belief that cops get divorced more than others is not supported by research. This fact does not mean we don’t get more divorces, only that there’s no good science to prove it. Policing does involve unique stresses and strains on marriages that we should be aware of.

Many conscientious young people considering a career in law enforcement want to know about the divorce rate of cops. Police forums are consulted, and internet searches performed with the simple question: What’s the deal with cops and divorce?

Let’s start with the internet. God bless the internet. Really. When I was in college two hundred years ago I couldn’t use the internet for my school papers. I had to go to the library and then type the damn thing out with my typewriter. Man was I excited when they came up with the auto erase function (fewer bottles of white out).

But the internet is also known for spreading myth like wildfire, which brings us back to the topic at hand. A quick check of the internet would have us believing cops have a ridiculously high divorce rate. If you want to take Sheriff Ray Nash’s statement that the divorce rate for police officers is twenty to fifty times that of the general public, or police psychologist Goldfarb’s ominous and authoritative sounding statement that "All research shows police suffer a substantially higher divorce rate with estimates ranging from 60 to 75%" you go right ahead.

When I looked into this question I wanted to know what researchers had to say. My answer: not much. As much as university professors and masters thesis writers love to study us cops, there’s a real gap here. However, a breath of fresh air can be found in Prof. Michael Aamodt at the University of Arkansas. He isn’t interested in perpetuating myths of how screwed up cops are and then making money fixing us. He’s interested in the truth.

Aamodt was kind enough to forward me an advance copy of a project he did with McCoy, called A comparison of law enforcement divorce rates with those of other occupations which will be published in the Journal of Police and Criminal Psychology. McCoy and Aamodt did two things. First they reviewed the RESEARCH (not opinion) on police divorce. What they found was that existing research on the topic is old. Really old...like from the 1960’s. Then, they looked at census data to take a stab at divorce rates of cops compared to the general public. They concluded, “the idea that divorce rates are unusually high for law enforcement workers is unfounded.”

Police officers may, fact, have higher divorce rates. McCoy and Aamodt just found that there is no research supporting that conclusion at present. They admitted using census data for their research has some problems.

To conclude from all this that you don’t need to pay careful attention to how your law enforcement career may be harmful to your marriage would be quite a mistake. A bucket load of other research has shown that policing can be bad for your coronary arteries, abbreviate your life and “spills over” into your marriage.

In The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work, John Gottman (another guy with solid research to back up his opinions) writes, "Statistically speaking, when a man is not willing to share power, there is an 81 percent chance that his marriage will self-destruct." As a marriage therapist I can say the police personality (cynical and controlling) and the nature of our job (“my way or the highway”) are not compatible with egalitarian marriages.

So, leaving aside the exact divorce rates of cops we can say police marriages have unique challenges. Like so many other threats to the wellness of law enforcement professionals, these challenges are manageable if we ASK FOR HELP when we need it. If your marriage is going down the toilet seek help. Marital counseling is a good investment and one we’ll discuss in the future.

Police mental health is looking at trees this week.

This is my families' secret spot. I can't tell you where it is because I'd have to kill you.

Have a good week.

Mindfulness on Patrol

“Sometimes while drifting idle on Walden Pond I cease to live and begin to be.” (Thoreau)

Mindfulness comes to us from the eastern meditation traditions. It involves paying nonjudgemental attention to ones immediate experience. It’s a form of meditation and is sometimes called “mindfulness meditation.” Historically, while the western world has been busy trying to figure out how to predict and control the environment, eastern meditation practitioners have been focused on the mind.

Our minds can - and frequently are - the source of a great deal of suffering. “Life is suffering” is the first of the Buddhist Four Noble Truths. When I was in my early 20’s I started figuring out the extend to which my own mind is filled with absolute shite. Lamenting the past, worrying about the future, “woulda coulda shoulda’s.” The sheer number of books on mindfulness tells me I’m not alone in wanting to better understand this phenomenon.

Since westerners love to put things under the microscope it was just a matter of time before mindfulness was analyzed by men in white coats. Researchers (most notably Jon Kabat-Zin) have found mindfulness meditation helps us with depression, anxiety, sleep disturbances and a general sense of wellness. Now, if you’re one of those self-actualized cops you don’t need to bother with the rest of this post. For the rest of us, here’s how you practice mindfulness.

The seat of mindfulness is the mind. We direct our attention to information provided by our minds. We pay attention to our thoughts, feelings and bodily sensations in the here-and-now. Importantly, we just notice them without judging them. That’s the hard part.

We leave one part of our consciousness always available to observe. Break off a piece of your mind and lift it about 20 feet over your body. This will become what Arthur Deikman calls your “observing self.” This little guy hovering over you simply observes your bodily sensations (feeling tight, bloated etc.) your thoughts and your feelings.

One of the gifts of mindfulness is that it is highly conducive to being fully grounded in the moment. Whatever you’re doing is ALL you’re doing. There’s a technical term for groundedness’ opposite. It’s called being all over the map. When we’re all over the map we’re victims of the shite that usually guides our lives.

That little observing bastard vanishes immediately during Code-3 runs and in progress calls. No worries though, when the smoke clears he’ll pop back up if you let him.

Mindfulness practice is free. Our return on investment is off the chart. If your goal is not only survive this career, but to live well through it I would highly recommend learning more about mindfulness.

The Thought-Mood Connection for Police Officers

WARNING: I finally figured out what a “hyperlink” is.

The easiest way to destroy someone’s OODA loop is to take away either of the following universal human needs: prediction and control. A rather brilliant demonstration of this technique applied to policing can be found here.

Let’s talk about controlling your moods. Many of us get into problems in this area. Either we feel victimized by our own anxiety, depression or irritability, or we victimize others with our moods. Or both. As a therapist, the vast majority of clients I’ve treated over the years struggle with mood disorders. Pharmaceutical companies make bazillions of dollars each year selling us pills to help us with them.

“Cognitive therapy” is tailor made to help folks take charge of their moods. I’ve taken college courses on cognitive therapy, been to seminars on it, and read books and articles on it. Today, I’m gonna boil it down to the very basics, tie it up in a nice bow and give it to you. You can shit can it or use it. I hope you choose the latter.

Here we go.

Moods don’t come out of thin air. They are directly influenced by our THOUGHTS.

Thought - - - Mood - - - Behavior

If you have “happy” thoughts what kind of mood do you think you’ll be in? If you have many thoughts along the lines of, “I’m gettin’ screwed over ONCE AGAIN by [add “that guy” here],” you’re probably going to be in a foul mood. Not rocket science is it?

There are two things you need to know about thoughts as they relate to emotions. First, you can control your thoughts...and that’s important. Secondly, we frequently have thoughts that are inaccurate. That should appeal to our cop sensibilities (“Ha! You’re WRONG you dumb ass thought!”) Feelings are never “wrong,” but thoughts can be dead wrong. Cognitive therapists spend a lot of time helping people discover for themselves how their thinking gets bollixed.

Here are some common errors of thinking police officers are especially prone to. If you can (a) recognize when you’ve made an error in your thinking and (b) replace the inaccurate thought with a more realistic one you are doing cognitive therapy on YOURSELF. . .for freeeeeee.

I’ve adapted these from The Feeling Good Handbook by David Burns.

All or nothing thinking: You see things in black-or-white categories. If a situation falls

short of perfect, you see it as a total failure. You park in a bad spot for an in-

progress call and think, “I totally screwed up.”

Overgeneralization: You see a single negative event, such as getting your ass chewed

by your sergeant as a never ending pattern of defeat by using words such as

“always” or “never” when you think about it.

“Should” statements: Sometimes called “musterbating.” You tell yourself things

SHOULD be the way you hoped or expected them to be. After making any

one of the five thousand mistakes cops can make on any given day, you say

“I should have...” Then, you proceed to bash yourself up.

These are called “cognitive distortions” (‘cognitions’ are thoughts) and there are many more where those came from. To change your thinking (and thus, your mood) you need to start paying attention to what’s in your mind. That’s the hardest part for most people.

A key lever in living well is mindfulness. I’ll talk about mindfulness next week. For now, it just means adopting a curious attitude toward our thoughts, recognizing when we are distorting them, and then lovingly replacing the “distorted” thought with something more accurate. If your supervisor or work partner expresses frustration about something you did it does not mean they hate you. It just means they got frustrated.

Regarding the money you may save in therapy bills and medications by applying the above: just send me whatever amount you think is fair. If you don’t send any payment you’re a bad person and you should hate yourself.

CYA LEGAL DISCLAIMER

This web site is not intended to be a psychotherapy service nor as a substitute for mental health or psychopharmaceutical treatment. If you need therapy or medication, don’t be a moron...get yourself in to the doctor.

Have a mindful week and thrive.

Crisis Intervention Teams

Remember when you were interviewed for your police job and they asked, “Why do you want to be a [name of your agency here] police officer?” Somewhere in your response you probably said something about wanting to help people. That’s what your supposed to say, right?

Police work is one of the helping professions. Unfortunately, we don’t usually see the fruit of our helping actions. Sometimes we do, but not often. In the Bhagavad-Gita we are told, "The man who is devoted and not attached to the fruit of his actions obtains tranquillity; whilst he who through desire has attachment for the fruit of action is bound down thereby." I’m that “bound down” guy. I’d like to see a little more fruit.

Patrol officers arrest the same people, frequently for the same time over and over again. I arrested one guy four times for possession of cocaine in one year. I cite people for having open containers of alcohol over and over again. Same person, same place, same cheap, high octane booze. Most officers rather quickly become somewhat jaded (duh!) and this jadedness starts to creep into what Skolnik calls “the working personality” of the police officer.

In the broadest sense, though, every time we treat people with respect we “help” them. And, yes, we do arrest burglars, car thieves and rapists. Clearly, we help the community with every good arrest. Unlike landscapers or dentists though, we usually don’t have the luxury of standing back at the end of the day and saying, “wow, look what a good job I did today.” Humans kind of need that...at least most of us do.

Enter the Crisis Intervention Team (CIT). Most of you probably haven’t heard of CIT, but it’s becoming quite popular, both in the U.S. and Canada. I just got back from the International CIT Conference in San Antonio Texas, and I came back with a crazy feeling that I can actually help people and see the fruit of that help.

What is CIT?
CIT consists of police officers taking the lead in fixing a big shit sandwich: the mental health system, specifically the criminalization of the mentally ill. Here’s what we know:


Nationally our jails of overflowing with mentally ill people, the vast majority of which have committed relatively minor offenses.
The fiscal impact this has on state and local governments is obscene.
The cost in moral currency is greater.
Through no fault of their own a lot of cops are killing mentally ill as a result of (a) the psychotic behavior of the individual and (b) the lack of training on the part of officers about how to manage psychotic behavior. A lot more cops are getting injured as result of this lack of training. Mental health consumers also get lumped up a lot.


CIT involves police departments partnering with community mental health and advocacy groups to ensure services for those experiencing a psychiatric crisis can get treatment.
CIT officers get 40 hours of specialized training in de-escalation techniques, signs and symptoms of mental illness, local resources, the stigma attached to mental illness and scenario training.
The end result is that CIT officers actually get that crazy guy HELP instead of arresting him.

Now, that would feel kind of good I would imagine.

At 2 AM you get a call involving a mentally disturbed subject walking in traffic. When you hear the dispatch you already know it’s Ol’ Joe. You get there, sure enough Ol’ Joe’s still out of his friggin mind. His pants are soiled, he’s talking about being followed by the CIA, you get the idea. Now, you have a choice: You could transport Joe to the local mental health clinic (or have him transported there), and wait two hours for him to be admitted, OR you could take him to jail on his $200.00 warrant for peeing in public. If you’re like me, Ol’ Joe’s going to jail. And, while that solves the problem - which is our raison d’etre - it doesn’t bare much of the “helper” fruit.

CIT officers have systems in place whereby there is “no wrong door.” That means the department works out an understanding with the psych. ward (or detox center), that they’re not going to make us wait. They open the door, take Joe, TREAT HIM, and then hook him up with other TREATMENT facilities for aftercare. That way Joe gets help and doesn’t go back to jail.

The conference was inspiring. I saw a whole bunch of cops there who really had their heads and hearts in the right place. They reminded me of myself about 15 years ago. Before I became a cop I worked for eight years in a large county jail as a mental health professional. I tried my hardest to help thousands of Joes. But they kept coming back to jail. I got pretty burnt out and cynical...and that was BEFORE I became a cop. The difference between me back then and these CIT cops now (young and old) was that they actually are helping people.

Those with mental illness can recover, and we can be apart of that. That’s pretty cool.

The last speaker at the conference was especially inspiring. Dr. Frederick Frese is an expert on mental illness. He used to be the Director of Psychology at Case Western Reserve and he recently completed a chapter in a scholarly book about mental illness. He was also a Captain in the US Marine Corpse and a fluent spanish speaker. I was impressed with the guy before he even hit the stage. Dr. Frese was hilarious and self-deprecating. He stormed around the podium, made some very good impressions mixed in with the latest research on major mental illness. Did I mention Dr. Frese has schizophrenia and that he spent the better part of ten years of his life on locked psychiatric wards. I walked out of there thinking about that bumper sticker, “Don’t Believe Everything You Think.”

Cops and Booze (part two)

Denial is oxygen for alcoholism. It’s what gives it the power to destroy. Denial is a psychological defense mechanism; a reflexive lightening quick mental maneuver used by our psyches. The goal of a defense mechanisms is just that, defending our minds from pain. The irony of using denial as a defense mechanism is that, over time, it produces its own pain. That’s why we want to first expose denial as a defense mechanism, and then try and use other defenses.

Everybody currently residing on planet earth uses defense mechanisms. If we didn’t have them we’d be overrun by reality and left babbling somewhere on a psych ward.

There are many defense mechanisms available to us. Denial, when employed by the alcoholic manifests itself in the following non-exhaustive list of thoughts:

I’m not an alcoholic.

I can control my drinking.

I’ll just cut back.

I’ll just stick to beer.

I’m not as bad as [insert name of that guy who’s REALLY a lush here].

I’ll quit on [insert future date].

I’m only going to have [insert prearranged number of drinks here].

I’m only going to drink on holidays (or weekends, or every third thursday].

I could pull these out of my ass all day long, but you get the point. Step one for getting better from alcoholism is admitting your an alcoholic. That first step is a real bear. Many alcoholics never get to this stage. In AA, before you say anything, you introduce yourself. Specifically, you introduce yourself by saying, “I’m Joe Blow and I’m an alcoholic.” The creators of AA figured this denial thing out. Recovery from alcoholism starts and stops with this basic admission; this acceptance.

Are you with me so far? You either accept you’re an alcoholic or you don’t. If you’re not an alcoholic you don’t need to read any further, unless you’re just morbidly curious about how alcoholics get better.

You’ve now reached the frequently horrific and painful conclusion that you’re an alcoholic. Should you want to get better, you now have to decide if you want to stop or not. This may seem like a no-brainer, but it’s really not. Experienced substance abuse counselors really take their time with clients to determine if he/she wants to stop drinking. These counselors aren’t personally invested in your stopping, rather they feel you out to see where you’re at with it. If they decide you really want to stop, then there’s work to be done. If, in the end, you aren’t ready or willing, there’s not much they can do for you.

Many alcoholics know they’re such but they have decided to live out their days accompanied by the only person who really understands them: Jack Daniels. Frequently, the first thing the alcoholic does when they realize their state is they go on a real good bender. They pop their heads out of the ground, gopher like, see what’s waiting for them and say, “fuck that!”

Assuming you want to get better, you’ve so far admitted that you’re an alcoholic and decided you don’t want to be a practicing drunk. You should know there is no cure for alcoholism. Sorry. We don’t have a cure for diabetes either, only ways of living with the disease. We can live quite happily and healthily with alcoholism just as we can with diabetes.

The next step is getting help. Cops tend to really struggle with this one. We can have one of our arms blown off, have shrapnel wounds in our forehead and be bleeding out, but still we’ll say, “I’m good, I’m good.” It’s cop hubris.

Hubris (also hybris; pronounced /ˈhjuːbrɪs/) means extreme haughtiness or arrogance. Hubris often indicates being out of touch with reality and overestimating one's own competence or capabilities, especially for people in positions of power.

While there’s no cure for alcoholism, there is a cure for hubris: humility. Humility happens when we allow ourselves not to know; when we permit ourselves to be lost and vulnerable. We simply cannot pass to the next stage until we humble ourselves. This can take much time up to and including forever.

If we reach that humble stage we can then open up to getting h-e-l-p. If you can honestly say the following out loud, to another person, you have passed: “I need help.” For a lot of people, and especially cops, saying “I need help,” leaves the taste of shit in your mouth. Let me suggest the taste of shit in your mouth is a small price to pay for getting better from this disease.

If you’ve gotten this far, things start to open up a bit. Now the only step left is availing yourself of the help available, and there’s a lot of it. What follows is a list of options. I would recommend starting with a visit to your primary care doctor and spilling your beans about your drinking.

[This is a convenient place for denial to poke back up in the form of something like “hell no I’m not talking to my doctor about that...it’ll get back to my department” or some other such thing. To this, I call bullshit. I call excuse, I call denial. I would talk to your union rep. if you have doubts. If you don’t want to talk to your union rep. for the same reason I again call bullshit. If in denial you probably won’t see one of your departments peer counselors, or EAP or anything else out there...if this is you, with love in my heart I say go back to step one.]

Your doctor should be able to determine how advanced your alcoholism has become. Depending on that here’s what you could do for treatment:

1. In patient alcohol detoxification.
2. Out patient intensive alcohol treatment.
3. Substance abuse counseling.
4. Alcoholics Anonymous.

I could say a lot more about what each of these look like, but for the sake of brevity I’ll leave it at that. You can’t stop drinking for your children or your spouse or to save your career. You can only quit for yourself. I remember going to the liquor store with my dad when I was small. Back in those days the only non-alcoholic form of beer they had was called “Near Beer.” I clearly remembering seeing Near Beer in the refrigerated door and knowing what it was. After pops got the good stuff and we were in the car, I said, “Dad why don’t you get Near Beer?” He quietly said, “It doesn’t taste the same.”

We gotta make a decision

We leave tonight or live and die this way (Tracy Chapman, “Fast Car”)

What’s your decision?